This new product might be better, but Shimmer was publicly criticized exploitative when it launched. I saw those criticisms at the time, gave the product a fair chance anyway, and unfortunately found them to be accurate.
I used Shimmer in 2022. The app had poor UX and frequent bugs, and the core offering (weekly Google Meet sessions with a “coach”) felt like generic self-help and not personalized coaching. The promised between-session support mostly consisted of DM'd article links, even after I raised that concern directly.
The sessions themselves often felt unprofessional, with background noise, unstable connections, and poor audio quality. The coach WFM'd on their couch during call. Given the price (hundreds of dollars per month at the time), the gap between what was marketed and what was delivered was significant.
Hopefully the new product addresses these issues, but I’d encourage people evaluating it to look at Shimmer’s prior execution and customer feedback, not just the announcement.
I'm sorry you had a poor experience! 2022 was the year I got diagnosed and the app definitely wasn't nearly as good as it is now, and I'm sorry you went through those bugs. But more importantly, I'm sorry about the experience you had with your coach. We take these flags really seriously and since then, we've put in several rounds of guardrails in the hiring process, with ongoing contract renewals with our coaches, and general culture & training. Now, we only take <3.5% of qualified coaches and have far more processes in place to make sure these things don't happen and catch them if they slip through. Because we don't record the sessions or supervise them because of privacy, there definitely has been a few situations like yours and again, we do take them really seriously! We do have hundreds if not thousands of really impactful stories and progress (I've personally cried in multiple feedback calls) so if anyone is reading this, I highly recommend checking out this page too! https://testimonial.to/shimmer-care/all
As an ADHD person, this app looks like a repackaging (with nice design) of all the stuff I’ve built up over years - habit tracking, daily/weekly/yearly reflection, detailed task management, etc.
This isn’t for me (because I’ve already built a system that works), but this looks like something that would be very useful. For the target user who does feel stuck and hasn’t successfully built their system, this looks like a phenomenal product.
I appreciate the emphasis on self-reflection and perhaps the implied focus on continuous improvement.
Over the last few years I implemented a weekly self-review + planning practice (think solo agile retrospective), and my life has been on a steady trajectory of improvement since.
Edit: commenting on the product concept, not the company, pricing, or concerning tracking practices.
Glad to hear you've built a system that works for you! We've also heard from a lot of our beta users that they've tried to cobble together something similar, and a lot of their feedback and ideas is what we used to build this initial version (in collaboration with our Research Lab to integrate the latest methods too). Many of them weren't able to push their self-built systems over the finish line or maintain it, due to ADHD challenges though. Our goal is to build a flexible enough system that it can be adapted for various learning styles (in practice we're still far off from where we want to be) and continue building agents on top of it that make science-backed exercises and methods more accessible. A lot of the best practices are currently gated behind long textbooks and scattered PDF worksheets so I'm really excited about making this more accessible. For example, this week we're working on an "energy accounting" agent that's widely used (in varying formats) across ADHD practitioners that many ADHDers know they want to do theoretically but haven't found the way to follow through on it.
I love the weekly self review and planning practice you mention; I do a similar one with myself and my co-founder each week and have started moving that process into Indy recently!
Here is my template from obsidian that I use for my weekly reflection - customize reflection based on your values and priorities. I have goals to improve work-life balance, social connections (social isolation was a factor driving poor outcomes, and through deliberate consistent effort I have solved this problem).
Hyper scheduling: https://dev.to/maxpatiiuk/series/32301 (I stumbled upon this and implemented a form of it, although mostly I just like the colors in my calendar)
- [ ] Review year compass
- [ ] Review journal entries from the week
- [ ] Review last week's reflection
## Quick summary
> *Headline for the week*:
## Basic planning
- [ ] Set up outline of the week in Outlook
- [ ] Plan a fun weekend activity:
- [ ] Plan to visit one new restaurant:
- [ ] Plan one meet up or social activity:
- meditation (I combine with a fancy LED face mask to help reinforce the habit via my desire to combat wrinkles and acne - the cryoglow is better at acne than wrinkles so far)
- exercise (you can add notes)
- evening leisure time (if I don’t have dedicated leisure time, I end up revenge bedtime procrastinating/doomscrolling)
- stretching (there are two simple band stretching exercises that solved what I thought would be life-long neck and shoulder pain)
When I really struggle with productivity, I find the pomodoro system is a good bootstrap, and TickTick makes it easy to start. I like seeing the pomos on the built-in calendar.
I’m an adult with combined type ADHD.
I feel very strongly that any device which has other apps is a terrible tool for ADHD management and organization. No matter how well intentioned, and I know that you are.
One needs to spend less time on devices. Go analogue. Pen and paper.
The best tool that I have found is the Bullet Journal Method. It takes time, effort, and there is a learning curve. The ROI is higher than from any app. No other tool has impacted my life and productivity more.
That said, I have found some tertiary apps to be helpful, though my BuJo is my compass. Endel for time boxing/Pomodoro, and sleep.
Headspace for guided meditation.
No, it doesn’t have to be aesthetic, with pretty lettering and doodles (as seen in social media).
As an ADHD person, the landing page is absolutely anti-ADHD - a lot of stuff with basically no info about what it really does. It should have been all concise and tangible information, simple example, demo. Instead just a lot of marketing fluff. I spent all the focus budget there and I have no idea what it does.
Perhaps try to go directly into the app store, I think that copy and the screenshots is a lot more straight forward. Our care team has skewed the landing page to be a bit more of "show the benefit" rather than the functionality (since a lot of the functionality looks like chat bots) but we can definitely take another look through it and I love the idea of including a demo! For now, the youtube demo is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDSDxyXv6i4
I am going to second the comment you are replying to. Strongly.
Why are you (indirectly by omission) asking a cohort of people who need information to be direct, to redirect? That's a serious market/message mismatch.
> Our care team has skewed the landing page to be a bit more of "show the benefit" rather than the functionality
That is what the snake oil industry does. Or enterprise sales. Even cults. ("Look at what we say these people say about us!" "We have a solution to your problem! [restated several times in different ways]!"
I am baffled by the term "care team" in this context.
I find that being concrete and credible, instead of asking people who don't know you for trust and unrewarded interest out of the gate, is a much better way to communicate something that is real.
If you do have a way to help ADHD people, I wish you luck communicating that. As an ADHD person myself, I have system creation/adoption fatigue. You seem to be aware of this. So be very direct about exactly what you do that helps, so someone that has tried many things, i.e. a sophisticated customer by necessity, can judge anything you say. (As they say in science, non-testable claims are not worth much. When marketing solutions to serious problems, this relates to the first thing you show people.)
Fair, feedback heard from multiple people here on: being more direct, concrete, credible. I'll take this back for the next iteration of the landing page!
A huge intro post, like a text wall. That's everything an adhd person is trying to avoid.
Started the app. A couple of "motivational speeches". Asking some questions I don't even understand. Answered randomly, just to see what the app is offering. At the end: account required.
That's where you first lost me.
So I tried the website. First sentence just some sale-pitch-speech:
> Built from lessons learned after 80,000+ ADHD coaching sessions, Indy gives you the structure you need, daily support that keeps you accountable, and momentum you can actually sustain.
On the right some nothing-saying screenshot. Scrolling down. More text. Buzzword-Bingo. "Journey". "Build a vision." "Stop dreaming about your future. Start building it."
Great, another one of those catchy, fancy offers pretending to help you. Another pretty website from the default vercel-ish website-builder.
No offense - perhaps it's my asperger. This does not seem helpful at all. Maybe it is. Then it's on me.
I need clear, focussed messages. No noise. No modern interface. Form follows function. Not the other way around.
I suspect that the ADHD audience on HN would skew towards people who have already developed coping mechanisms and systems (and some people seem to have very high intellectual horsepower), so you might not find the best market fit or feedback here. I think I am past the point where this may have been a fit for me, but earlier in my life it may have been very useful.
Edit: Can you explain what "clear boundaries around non-medical use" means?
Thanks, appreciate you! Agree that some folks here likely have put together their own systems too, so I was also hoping to get some inspiration from what folks have done and what's working for them! And I also know this group will be the most critical (in a good way) so it's always helpful for us to launch here as it makes our product and systems better.
If there's anyone in your life who's earlier on in their journey, do send Indy their way!
re: Non-medical use, Indy doesn't give advice, diagnose, treat, or interpret symptoms. We don’t tell people what they SHOULD do. We focus on reflection, structuring thoughts, noticing patterns, and helping users orient themselves, so that they build autonomy and capacity over time. E.g. generic LLMs don't often have tight guardrails and they can drift into prescriptive or quasi-clinical territory simply because that’s what users ask for.
Hahaha, I'm a millennial and that still resonates with me, so I get it. I think within every community there's always a really big span and hopefully our new product experience can be helpful to a subset of that span! With the AI chats, it's substantially more personalized and less restrictive than last gen text box flows!
As a privacy concious ADHDer, it is a sad reality that OP's product is never going to be something I can trust enough to use. Anyone has any experience of similar/alternative local-first FOSS alternatives / replacements, or resources on how you figured out how to build workflows that worked with you with non-ADHD focused tools? I have come to the point where I am going to be losing my job very soon because I have 0 executive functioning, silver-lining of this is that I can maybe take some time to figure out how better processes than I have and enough non-work related things I want to get done to have an incentive for this
There's a little button inside the profile page to discover our ADHD coaching service (1:1 coaching with one of our 50+ expert ADHD coaches). Right now we don't push it explicitly but have already seen folks explore it. Indy is meant to be an accessible form of support for those who can't afford coaching or are in between coaching seasons, or even use it with their coaching experience. We also advertise our free community events (last week we hosted a 2026 planning workshop with 1,000+ participants) and in those events, often folks also discover 1:1 coaching and will join thereafter. We're also exploring what integrating the core Indy features into 1:1 coaching looks like but doing so carefully with the feedback of members and our coaches, so in the future it may be one app with multiple tiers!
Thanks! Why would a user prefer this service instead of a conventional AI subscription service with memory (and possibly read access to their desktop data)? The latter can automatically capture key interactions during the day and set reminders for regular checkins. Is there a secret sauce that makes this better so it is worth the extra effort?
1) A big differentiation is the guidance. Indy is based on science-backed frameworks and exercises that set the foundation for and fuel the main scaffolding interactions. For example, by going through the lifeline exercise when you sign up, members are prompted to think of future events across different life areas (vs. often when you tackle this yourself you may just start working on productivity/work oriented things for example) and the objective function of the app is general well-being rather than productivity
2) Indy is built not to give you answers but to build your capacity. For example, in the problem solving agent, it teaches you the COM-B framework through demonstration, and I've already talked to many members who are surprised that they found themselves going through similar thought process even when Indy wasn't there and getting things done that they haven't been able to in months or years
3) Sounds trivial but the design and user experience. It's built for ADHD and although not perfect and there's tons we want to add, the app is trained to help you see the good (pulling out wins, surfacing it in pretty ways, allowing you to add photos to build salience, etc.) to build self trust over time; and other UI / illustration choices to provide some dopamine (and we've considered hard the balance between providing dopamine but not trying to just get people to return to the app for the sake of it)
I'm AuDHD and I think the marked for products to help with ADHD that do not actually work for anyone except for the person who came up with them is absolutely saturated. I think what I've come to realize is that the process of building a system is at least as important as the system itself. This means nothing designed by someone who is not me will really work for me, and that's that. I suppose a lot of money can be made off of people who have not yet realized this.
I also have to say something about the "for those who feel stuck... indy will be your compass" reads incredibly fucking dystopian to me.
I totally hear you that there are so many products in the market that only work for the person who designed them. We designed this with hundreds of beta users (I had 5-6 deep calls per day for at least a month) and it's based off of our learnings from our 50+ adhd coaches and thousands of adhd coaching clients as well. As we build this out more, we have deeper personalization of how the app works planned too, so hopefully we'll be able to serve (not all but) many ADHDers! I'm always curious about what people build on their own though, and what about Indy wasn't fit for them. This helps us figure out what adaptability to build going forward! But if you have a system that works well for you already, that's amazing!
And hear you on that copy! We tested it with our beta community and it was based off of thousands of ADHDers main sentiment & challenge. Here are the top ones if you're curious: “I’m stuck and something has to change”; “I don’t trust myself anymore”; “I want direction, not another to-do list”; “I want to work with my ADHD, not fight it”; we'll be continuing to test this as we talk to more users!
i made an account on shimmer when you launched and even tried it out. i have made multiple requests to your nonexistent support to delete it and it all goes into a dustbin apparently. very subpar experience that makes me not trust at all how you'd handle my data.
sorry that it hasn't been done yet! we generally attend to these pretty quickly. If you sent it to support, it may have been buried. I can look into it though. Can you send an email to privacy@shimmer.care?
A few main differences: 1) it moves you towards things that matter to you. E.g. not open prompts but helping you break down each week and day to move you closer to your future events you envision; 2) it uses science-back methods (like COM-B) to help you solve challenges in your life; 3) it remembers when things worked / haven't worked for you so that when you bring them up in the future it can support you with personalized solutions rather than just answering what's the "best solution". We're also working on the next phase of agents which include energy accounting, values-discovery, strengths-discovery, habit building, and more.
The app-store handling (QR code on desktop, app to right app store on phone) is probably supposed to be clever, but browsing on desktop it just felt annoying. QR codes are fine, but at least give me a small direct link below the code. I don't want to take out my phone to figure out if it's supported, I want to click on a link that takes me to the app store so I can have a look at the page, the reviews, and if I'm logged in click install to trigger my phone to do its thing (not sure if the last part also works on apple or is only a google thing)
I applaud the effort put into this product, and the willingness to help others in our situation. As someone with ADHD et al, I'll give my feedback.
I think Indy has a lot of good intentions, but I am highly suspicious of its efficacy. Personally, I have always been somewhat opposed of using applications on distracting and addicting devices in order to help with executive function issues. It's all too easy to open my phone to use one application and then seemingly end up on a completely different application mere minutes later.
Do you all have any analytics to share? I am curious how many people download Indy vs. how many people actually use it on a consistent basis. I can absolutely seem myself downloading such an application, attempting to set it up, and either stopping halfway through or never opening the app again.
> what other AI tools you’ve tried for ADHD
None. I do not believe LLMs in their current state can meaningfully help any neurodevelopmental nor mental health disorders. Until LLMs acquire the ability to force me to do a particular task or provide enough consequences for not doing a particular task, then I see them as no different than overcomplicated Todo lists for ADHD. Though, I do believe LLMs remove a lot of friction in getting started on certain types of work. Most importantly, I already have to be motivated in the first place in order to use LLMs to remove friction on whatever task I am attempting to complete.
I personally believe a lot of productivity apps, especially for ADHD, are just distraction traps that provide the user with an illusory sense of productivity, when in reality, the user is actually just procrastinating further.
Perhaps this is merely a projection on my part, but I think a lot of people have convinced themselves that various apps will yield better organization and that better organization will yield better habits. But why do people want better habits? My first inclination is that people believe if something becomes a habit, then it will become effortless and one will not have to rely on motivation or willpower anymore.
However, the irony is that it takes consistent and direct effort to even build a habit. Once a habit is built, the consistent effort never stops, but rather, one just adapts to the amount of effort required. The older I become, the more I convinced that there really are no shortcuts in life.
Appreciate the thought behind this comment, and the willingness to help with the questions we asked! We actually just came out of beta last week, so the data is skewed. Beta users have really high usage & retention rates (probably due to the accountability that they knew they'd be talking to me on the phone at the end, and since they applied and committed to testing).
Interesting thought behind using 1) force and 2) consequences to get tasks done. I think those are definitely 2 useful levers, but there are other levers to get these things done too (of course, without context to what tasks you're referring to). On Indy, we use positive motivation & emotional salience to help users connect their current task to future goals, we help them explore if there's a gap of [capability], [opportunity], or [motivation] to get something done (COM-B model), and help them draw on past strategies that have worked for them that they may have forgot (non-exhaustive). Indy is intentionally not a to-do list, there's actually no lists in there, as lists get overwhelming, but instead helps the users cut down and reflect on what's really important today or this week to get to your life goals (existential productivity vs. traditional productivity).
I like your line of thinking at the end there. A lot of our members come in thinking they want better organization / productivity / habits, or in general just MORE, but we know through research that that doesn't actually yield a more fruitful life. And yes haha, no shortcuts in life, but I try to enjoy the process :)
Some ADHD folks have something called "justice sensitivity"[0]. Put plainly, we get more bothered than neurotypical folks by actions and events we view as morally wrong.
I can't say for certain that this is caused by my ADHD or not, but I have a "sensitivity" to dark patterns. That is to say, dark patterns bug me more than they probably should.
Hiding the pricing until after signup is a dark pattern. It's a clear case of the company optimizing for their interests over mine and they are therefore unworthy of my trust (or so my brain tells me). After all, what other user-hostile design decisions are they going to make?
What ends up happening is that my brain puts its guard up, and keeps it up. It's constantly on the lookout for more subtle tricks and corner cutting.
Furthermore, I'm offended that they think I'm that stupid (but that's probably the developer in me and not my ADHD).
The landing page piqued my interest but then let me down. Hard. Not because $40 a month (as reported by another user here) is too much, but because I find dark patterns to be morally repugnant.
I just wanted to clarify, this app is COMPLETELY FREE. There is no cost.
The cost you're seeing is for our other product that includes live body doubling (co-working) sessions that are guided by our ADHD coaches. I think I might remove that link or move it to the bottom. Sorry for the confusion!
And just to add, I also have the justice sensitivity! Because of that, even our other service (ADHD coaching) has all the prices VERY clearly on the home page. It includes the monthly price in big font and a clear summary of what's included in each package. https://www.shimmer.care/
I click on the link and see that ublock origin blocks a total of 15 tracking scripts on your health-related website. At the bottom there is a "cookie management" popup and I wonder what went wrong that your website includes Google, Intercom, Stripe, and several others BEFORE the user has clicked through the "cookie" dialog.
Is this yet another US-based startup that totally misunderstands that GDPR is not about blocking "cookies" but instead that it is about not telling Google that someone just visited an ADHD-related website?
I'm dumbfounded by the ignorance every single time. Why do people spend effort on cookie banners and stuff when they simply include every tracking script on first load of the website?
I'm not advocating that you need to be GDPR compliant if you are US-based and dgaf about EU customers. But if you do these shenanigans with cookie banner then at least do them correctly. And even for non-EU customers it is extremely rude to share visits to a health related website with so many third party companies that clearly build tracking profiles and utilize them to extract as much money from you as possible.
Ah the shimmer.care/indy site is a subpath for our main site (shimmer.care) which uses all of those scripts, but you're right that some of them aren't necessary for indy's site. We'll look into how to separate the two so cookie management is more straightforward for indy's site as this is a separate app still.
This new product might be better, but Shimmer was publicly criticized exploitative when it launched. I saw those criticisms at the time, gave the product a fair chance anyway, and unfortunately found them to be accurate.
I used Shimmer in 2022. The app had poor UX and frequent bugs, and the core offering (weekly Google Meet sessions with a “coach”) felt like generic self-help and not personalized coaching. The promised between-session support mostly consisted of DM'd article links, even after I raised that concern directly.
The sessions themselves often felt unprofessional, with background noise, unstable connections, and poor audio quality. The coach WFM'd on their couch during call. Given the price (hundreds of dollars per month at the time), the gap between what was marketed and what was delivered was significant.
Hopefully the new product addresses these issues, but I’d encourage people evaluating it to look at Shimmer’s prior execution and customer feedback, not just the announcement.
I'm sorry you had a poor experience! 2022 was the year I got diagnosed and the app definitely wasn't nearly as good as it is now, and I'm sorry you went through those bugs. But more importantly, I'm sorry about the experience you had with your coach. We take these flags really seriously and since then, we've put in several rounds of guardrails in the hiring process, with ongoing contract renewals with our coaches, and general culture & training. Now, we only take <3.5% of qualified coaches and have far more processes in place to make sure these things don't happen and catch them if they slip through. Because we don't record the sessions or supervise them because of privacy, there definitely has been a few situations like yours and again, we do take them really seriously! We do have hundreds if not thousands of really impactful stories and progress (I've personally cried in multiple feedback calls) so if anyone is reading this, I highly recommend checking out this page too! https://testimonial.to/shimmer-care/all
As an ADHD person, this app looks like a repackaging (with nice design) of all the stuff I’ve built up over years - habit tracking, daily/weekly/yearly reflection, detailed task management, etc.
This isn’t for me (because I’ve already built a system that works), but this looks like something that would be very useful. For the target user who does feel stuck and hasn’t successfully built their system, this looks like a phenomenal product.
I appreciate the emphasis on self-reflection and perhaps the implied focus on continuous improvement.
Over the last few years I implemented a weekly self-review + planning practice (think solo agile retrospective), and my life has been on a steady trajectory of improvement since.
Edit: commenting on the product concept, not the company, pricing, or concerning tracking practices.
Glad to hear you've built a system that works for you! We've also heard from a lot of our beta users that they've tried to cobble together something similar, and a lot of their feedback and ideas is what we used to build this initial version (in collaboration with our Research Lab to integrate the latest methods too). Many of them weren't able to push their self-built systems over the finish line or maintain it, due to ADHD challenges though. Our goal is to build a flexible enough system that it can be adapted for various learning styles (in practice we're still far off from where we want to be) and continue building agents on top of it that make science-backed exercises and methods more accessible. A lot of the best practices are currently gated behind long textbooks and scattered PDF worksheets so I'm really excited about making this more accessible. For example, this week we're working on an "energy accounting" agent that's widely used (in varying formats) across ADHD practitioners that many ADHDers know they want to do theoretically but haven't found the way to follow through on it.
I love the weekly self review and planning practice you mention; I do a similar one with myself and my co-founder each week and have started moving that process into Indy recently!
Do you mind sharing your system that worked for you in detail or re-direct any good posts that detail them? Appreciate it.
Here is my template from obsidian that I use for my weekly reflection - customize reflection based on your values and priorities. I have goals to improve work-life balance, social connections (social isolation was a factor driving poor outcomes, and through deliberate consistent effort I have solved this problem).
Hyper scheduling: https://dev.to/maxpatiiuk/series/32301 (I stumbled upon this and implemented a form of it, although mostly I just like the colors in my calendar)
Yearly reflection: https://yearcompass.com/
Weekly reflection:
```md ## Preparation
- [ ] Review year compass - [ ] Review journal entries from the week - [ ] Review last week's reflection
## Quick summary
> *Headline for the week*:
## Basic planning
- [ ] Set up outline of the week in Outlook - [ ] Plan a fun weekend activity: - [ ] Plan to visit one new restaurant: - [ ] Plan one meet up or social activity:
## Values-based reflection
1. Health: - 2. Resilience: - 3. Social connection: - 4. Mindfulness: - 5. Adventure: -
## Retrospective
1. Went Well - 2. To improve - 3. Plan to improve/action items -
## Other notes
- ```
Daily reflection/journal:
```md
_Created: {{date}} {{time}}_ ({{date:DDD}}/365)
Gratitude (I am for three items):
Healthy Living Plan:
- Diet: - Exercise: - Work+Learning:
Daily reflection:
- Overall wellbeing (1-10): - Career: - Lifestyle hygiene: - Rose and thorn:
Journal:
```
I use TickTick because of the habit-tracking feature. Used to be todoist loyalist but it sucks for habits. https://help.ticktick.com/articles/7055781878401335296
Key habits I track:
- meditation (I combine with a fancy LED face mask to help reinforce the habit via my desire to combat wrinkles and acne - the cryoglow is better at acne than wrinkles so far) - exercise (you can add notes) - evening leisure time (if I don’t have dedicated leisure time, I end up revenge bedtime procrastinating/doomscrolling) - stretching (there are two simple band stretching exercises that solved what I thought would be life-long neck and shoulder pain)
When I really struggle with productivity, I find the pomodoro system is a good bootstrap, and TickTick makes it easy to start. I like seeing the pomos on the built-in calendar.
I’m an adult with combined type ADHD. I feel very strongly that any device which has other apps is a terrible tool for ADHD management and organization. No matter how well intentioned, and I know that you are.
One needs to spend less time on devices. Go analogue. Pen and paper. The best tool that I have found is the Bullet Journal Method. It takes time, effort, and there is a learning curve. The ROI is higher than from any app. No other tool has impacted my life and productivity more.
That said, I have found some tertiary apps to be helpful, though my BuJo is my compass. Endel for time boxing/Pomodoro, and sleep. Headspace for guided meditation.
No, it doesn’t have to be aesthetic, with pretty lettering and doodles (as seen in social media).
As an ADHD person, the landing page is absolutely anti-ADHD - a lot of stuff with basically no info about what it really does. It should have been all concise and tangible information, simple example, demo. Instead just a lot of marketing fluff. I spent all the focus budget there and I have no idea what it does.
Perhaps try to go directly into the app store, I think that copy and the screenshots is a lot more straight forward. Our care team has skewed the landing page to be a bit more of "show the benefit" rather than the functionality (since a lot of the functionality looks like chat bots) but we can definitely take another look through it and I love the idea of including a demo! For now, the youtube demo is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDSDxyXv6i4
I am going to second the comment you are replying to. Strongly.
Why are you (indirectly by omission) asking a cohort of people who need information to be direct, to redirect? That's a serious market/message mismatch.
> Our care team has skewed the landing page to be a bit more of "show the benefit" rather than the functionality
That is what the snake oil industry does. Or enterprise sales. Even cults. ("Look at what we say these people say about us!" "We have a solution to your problem! [restated several times in different ways]!"
I am baffled by the term "care team" in this context.
I find that being concrete and credible, instead of asking people who don't know you for trust and unrewarded interest out of the gate, is a much better way to communicate something that is real.
If you do have a way to help ADHD people, I wish you luck communicating that. As an ADHD person myself, I have system creation/adoption fatigue. You seem to be aware of this. So be very direct about exactly what you do that helps, so someone that has tried many things, i.e. a sophisticated customer by necessity, can judge anything you say. (As they say in science, non-testable claims are not worth much. When marketing solutions to serious problems, this relates to the first thing you show people.)
Fair, feedback heard from multiple people here on: being more direct, concrete, credible. I'll take this back for the next iteration of the landing page!
adhd here, too, including asperger. seconded:
A huge intro post, like a text wall. That's everything an adhd person is trying to avoid.
Started the app. A couple of "motivational speeches". Asking some questions I don't even understand. Answered randomly, just to see what the app is offering. At the end: account required.
That's where you first lost me.
So I tried the website. First sentence just some sale-pitch-speech:
> Built from lessons learned after 80,000+ ADHD coaching sessions, Indy gives you the structure you need, daily support that keeps you accountable, and momentum you can actually sustain.
On the right some nothing-saying screenshot. Scrolling down. More text. Buzzword-Bingo. "Journey". "Build a vision." "Stop dreaming about your future. Start building it."
Great, another one of those catchy, fancy offers pretending to help you. Another pretty website from the default vercel-ish website-builder.
No offense - perhaps it's my asperger. This does not seem helpful at all. Maybe it is. Then it's on me.
I need clear, focussed messages. No noise. No modern interface. Form follows function. Not the other way around.
Good stuff, I appreciate your work.
I suspect that the ADHD audience on HN would skew towards people who have already developed coping mechanisms and systems (and some people seem to have very high intellectual horsepower), so you might not find the best market fit or feedback here. I think I am past the point where this may have been a fit for me, but earlier in my life it may have been very useful.
Edit: Can you explain what "clear boundaries around non-medical use" means?
Thanks, appreciate you! Agree that some folks here likely have put together their own systems too, so I was also hoping to get some inspiration from what folks have done and what's working for them! And I also know this group will be the most critical (in a good way) so it's always helpful for us to launch here as it makes our product and systems better.
If there's anyone in your life who's earlier on in their journey, do send Indy their way!
re: Non-medical use, Indy doesn't give advice, diagnose, treat, or interpret symptoms. We don’t tell people what they SHOULD do. We focus on reflection, structuring thoughts, noticing patterns, and helping users orient themselves, so that they build autonomy and capacity over time. E.g. generic LLMs don't often have tight guardrails and they can drift into prescriptive or quasi-clinical territory simply because that’s what users ask for.
> I suspect that the ADHD audience on HN would skew towards people who have already developed coping mechanisms...
Can't speak for everyone, but as one guy - I wish lol. I'm just raw dogging life - to use Gen Z (or is it Alpha?) lingo.
(I wanted to add a sarcastic thing to my message but I'm too tired to even do that without sounding rude.)
Hahaha, I'm a millennial and that still resonates with me, so I get it. I think within every community there's always a really big span and hopefully our new product experience can be helpful to a subset of that span! With the AI chats, it's substantially more personalized and less restrictive than last gen text box flows!
As a privacy concious ADHDer, it is a sad reality that OP's product is never going to be something I can trust enough to use. Anyone has any experience of similar/alternative local-first FOSS alternatives / replacements, or resources on how you figured out how to build workflows that worked with you with non-ADHD focused tools? I have come to the point where I am going to be losing my job very soon because I have 0 executive functioning, silver-lining of this is that I can maybe take some time to figure out how better processes than I have and enough non-work related things I want to get done to have an incentive for this
Nice to see a fully free app without ads. Curious, do you plan to keep it that way and make no money from Indy?
There's a little button inside the profile page to discover our ADHD coaching service (1:1 coaching with one of our 50+ expert ADHD coaches). Right now we don't push it explicitly but have already seen folks explore it. Indy is meant to be an accessible form of support for those who can't afford coaching or are in between coaching seasons, or even use it with their coaching experience. We also advertise our free community events (last week we hosted a 2026 planning workshop with 1,000+ participants) and in those events, often folks also discover 1:1 coaching and will join thereafter. We're also exploring what integrating the core Indy features into 1:1 coaching looks like but doing so carefully with the feedback of members and our coaches, so in the future it may be one app with multiple tiers!
I’ll give this app a try later.
Nice, let us know how that goes.
Thanks! Why would a user prefer this service instead of a conventional AI subscription service with memory (and possibly read access to their desktop data)? The latter can automatically capture key interactions during the day and set reminders for regular checkins. Is there a secret sauce that makes this better so it is worth the extra effort?
A few things top of mind:
1) A big differentiation is the guidance. Indy is based on science-backed frameworks and exercises that set the foundation for and fuel the main scaffolding interactions. For example, by going through the lifeline exercise when you sign up, members are prompted to think of future events across different life areas (vs. often when you tackle this yourself you may just start working on productivity/work oriented things for example) and the objective function of the app is general well-being rather than productivity
2) Indy is built not to give you answers but to build your capacity. For example, in the problem solving agent, it teaches you the COM-B framework through demonstration, and I've already talked to many members who are surprised that they found themselves going through similar thought process even when Indy wasn't there and getting things done that they haven't been able to in months or years
3) Sounds trivial but the design and user experience. It's built for ADHD and although not perfect and there's tons we want to add, the app is trained to help you see the good (pulling out wins, surfacing it in pretty ways, allowing you to add photos to build salience, etc.) to build self trust over time; and other UI / illustration choices to provide some dopamine (and we've considered hard the balance between providing dopamine but not trying to just get people to return to the app for the sake of it)
I'm AuDHD and I think the marked for products to help with ADHD that do not actually work for anyone except for the person who came up with them is absolutely saturated. I think what I've come to realize is that the process of building a system is at least as important as the system itself. This means nothing designed by someone who is not me will really work for me, and that's that. I suppose a lot of money can be made off of people who have not yet realized this.
I also have to say something about the "for those who feel stuck... indy will be your compass" reads incredibly fucking dystopian to me.
I totally hear you that there are so many products in the market that only work for the person who designed them. We designed this with hundreds of beta users (I had 5-6 deep calls per day for at least a month) and it's based off of our learnings from our 50+ adhd coaches and thousands of adhd coaching clients as well. As we build this out more, we have deeper personalization of how the app works planned too, so hopefully we'll be able to serve (not all but) many ADHDers! I'm always curious about what people build on their own though, and what about Indy wasn't fit for them. This helps us figure out what adaptability to build going forward! But if you have a system that works well for you already, that's amazing!
And hear you on that copy! We tested it with our beta community and it was based off of thousands of ADHDers main sentiment & challenge. Here are the top ones if you're curious: “I’m stuck and something has to change”; “I don’t trust myself anymore”; “I want direction, not another to-do list”; “I want to work with my ADHD, not fight it”; we'll be continuing to test this as we talk to more users!
i made an account on shimmer when you launched and even tried it out. i have made multiple requests to your nonexistent support to delete it and it all goes into a dustbin apparently. very subpar experience that makes me not trust at all how you'd handle my data.
sorry that it hasn't been done yet! we generally attend to these pretty quickly. If you sent it to support, it may have been buried. I can look into it though. Can you send an email to privacy@shimmer.care?
I don't see what's different from any other journal app?
A few main differences: 1) it moves you towards things that matter to you. E.g. not open prompts but helping you break down each week and day to move you closer to your future events you envision; 2) it uses science-back methods (like COM-B) to help you solve challenges in your life; 3) it remembers when things worked / haven't worked for you so that when you bring them up in the future it can support you with personalized solutions rather than just answering what's the "best solution". We're also working on the next phase of agents which include energy accounting, values-discovery, strengths-discovery, habit building, and more.
The app-store handling (QR code on desktop, app to right app store on phone) is probably supposed to be clever, but browsing on desktop it just felt annoying. QR codes are fine, but at least give me a small direct link below the code. I don't want to take out my phone to figure out if it's supported, I want to click on a link that takes me to the app store so I can have a look at the page, the reviews, and if I'm logged in click install to trigger my phone to do its thing (not sure if the last part also works on apple or is only a google thing)
For now, here's the app store links if you want to access it from your laptop!
for apple: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/indy-your-adhd-copilot/id67543...
for google: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shimmer.co...
Sidenote, I appreciate that you allow installing on macos. I hate typing on a phone so having it run on a computer is much better.
Good point, we didn't consider that people would want to browse the app store from their laptop. We'll look into this today!
I applaud the effort put into this product, and the willingness to help others in our situation. As someone with ADHD et al, I'll give my feedback.
I think Indy has a lot of good intentions, but I am highly suspicious of its efficacy. Personally, I have always been somewhat opposed of using applications on distracting and addicting devices in order to help with executive function issues. It's all too easy to open my phone to use one application and then seemingly end up on a completely different application mere minutes later.
Do you all have any analytics to share? I am curious how many people download Indy vs. how many people actually use it on a consistent basis. I can absolutely seem myself downloading such an application, attempting to set it up, and either stopping halfway through or never opening the app again.
> what other AI tools you’ve tried for ADHD
None. I do not believe LLMs in their current state can meaningfully help any neurodevelopmental nor mental health disorders. Until LLMs acquire the ability to force me to do a particular task or provide enough consequences for not doing a particular task, then I see them as no different than overcomplicated Todo lists for ADHD. Though, I do believe LLMs remove a lot of friction in getting started on certain types of work. Most importantly, I already have to be motivated in the first place in order to use LLMs to remove friction on whatever task I am attempting to complete.
I personally believe a lot of productivity apps, especially for ADHD, are just distraction traps that provide the user with an illusory sense of productivity, when in reality, the user is actually just procrastinating further.
Perhaps this is merely a projection on my part, but I think a lot of people have convinced themselves that various apps will yield better organization and that better organization will yield better habits. But why do people want better habits? My first inclination is that people believe if something becomes a habit, then it will become effortless and one will not have to rely on motivation or willpower anymore.
However, the irony is that it takes consistent and direct effort to even build a habit. Once a habit is built, the consistent effort never stops, but rather, one just adapts to the amount of effort required. The older I become, the more I convinced that there really are no shortcuts in life.
Appreciate the thought behind this comment, and the willingness to help with the questions we asked! We actually just came out of beta last week, so the data is skewed. Beta users have really high usage & retention rates (probably due to the accountability that they knew they'd be talking to me on the phone at the end, and since they applied and committed to testing).
Interesting thought behind using 1) force and 2) consequences to get tasks done. I think those are definitely 2 useful levers, but there are other levers to get these things done too (of course, without context to what tasks you're referring to). On Indy, we use positive motivation & emotional salience to help users connect their current task to future goals, we help them explore if there's a gap of [capability], [opportunity], or [motivation] to get something done (COM-B model), and help them draw on past strategies that have worked for them that they may have forgot (non-exhaustive). Indy is intentionally not a to-do list, there's actually no lists in there, as lists get overwhelming, but instead helps the users cut down and reflect on what's really important today or this week to get to your life goals (existential productivity vs. traditional productivity).
I like your line of thinking at the end there. A lot of our members come in thinking they want better organization / productivity / habits, or in general just MORE, but we know through research that that doesn't actually yield a more fruitful life. And yes haha, no shortcuts in life, but I try to enjoy the process :)
Some ADHD folks have something called "justice sensitivity"[0]. Put plainly, we get more bothered than neurotypical folks by actions and events we view as morally wrong.
I can't say for certain that this is caused by my ADHD or not, but I have a "sensitivity" to dark patterns. That is to say, dark patterns bug me more than they probably should.
Hiding the pricing until after signup is a dark pattern. It's a clear case of the company optimizing for their interests over mine and they are therefore unworthy of my trust (or so my brain tells me). After all, what other user-hostile design decisions are they going to make?
What ends up happening is that my brain puts its guard up, and keeps it up. It's constantly on the lookout for more subtle tricks and corner cutting.
Furthermore, I'm offended that they think I'm that stupid (but that's probably the developer in me and not my ADHD).
The landing page piqued my interest but then let me down. Hard. Not because $40 a month (as reported by another user here) is too much, but because I find dark patterns to be morally repugnant.
[0] https://edgefoundation.org/the-fairness-imperative-adhd-and-...
P.S. I struggled to write this as its first thing in the morning and I haven't even had coffee.
I just wanted to clarify, this app is COMPLETELY FREE. There is no cost.
The cost you're seeing is for our other product that includes live body doubling (co-working) sessions that are guided by our ADHD coaches. I think I might remove that link or move it to the bottom. Sorry for the confusion!
And just to add, I also have the justice sensitivity! Because of that, even our other service (ADHD coaching) has all the prices VERY clearly on the home page. It includes the monthly price in big font and a clear summary of what's included in each package. https://www.shimmer.care/
i was wondering where the ai came in lol
lol
Saving you sometime, after you put your email and answering a few questions It's a paid app with monthly payment of ~$40 .
Basic collection your data.
No, it's 100% free! www.shimmer.care/indy-redirect (or search "ADHD Indy" on app store)
You might be heading to our community service on our main website, which is a different one (live body doubling, etc.)
I click on the link and see that ublock origin blocks a total of 15 tracking scripts on your health-related website. At the bottom there is a "cookie management" popup and I wonder what went wrong that your website includes Google, Intercom, Stripe, and several others BEFORE the user has clicked through the "cookie" dialog.
Is this yet another US-based startup that totally misunderstands that GDPR is not about blocking "cookies" but instead that it is about not telling Google that someone just visited an ADHD-related website?
I'm dumbfounded by the ignorance every single time. Why do people spend effort on cookie banners and stuff when they simply include every tracking script on first load of the website?
I'm not advocating that you need to be GDPR compliant if you are US-based and dgaf about EU customers. But if you do these shenanigans with cookie banner then at least do them correctly. And even for non-EU customers it is extremely rude to share visits to a health related website with so many third party companies that clearly build tracking profiles and utilize them to extract as much money from you as possible.
Ah the shimmer.care/indy site is a subpath for our main site (shimmer.care) which uses all of those scripts, but you're right that some of them aren't necessary for indy's site. We'll look into how to separate the two so cookie management is more straightforward for indy's site as this is a separate app still.